The Gulf War (1996)

STORYLINE

The 1990-’91 war in the Persian Gulf over Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, over oil and over the threat to both the Middle East and to the entire world, remains a fuzzy living room memory for many unassociated people with impressions of rolling tanks, zooming jets, flaming oil wells and President Bush, Gen.Norman Schwartzkopf and Saddam Hussein.

Remedying this, “Frontline” hands down a brisk, insightful and absorbing account of the whys and wherefores of a conflict whose true outcome still remains a question. Different points of view between Gen. Colin Powell, a major figure in the political action, and allied commander Schwartzkopf over the importance of Scud missiles and other strategy resurface. Margaret Thatcher vehemently defends Bush’s stand on Iraq, and Robert MacNamara and Powell are heard backing the sanctions that caused so much dissension.

Featured Documentary

Alex Winter and production company Field of Vision have released a short documentary on Barrett Brown’s release from FCI Three Rivers and the six-hour drive to his new residence, a halfway house near Dallas. The twenty-minute film called ‘Relatively Free’ features a skinnier, longer-haired Barrett Brown discussing his time in federal prison, the fight for press freedoms to come under a Trump administration, and why his case is a “jackpot case” for reformers, should they choose to make use of it. In a WIRED piece featuring the video, Barrett unveils his plans to build software called Pursuant, “an open-source, end-to-end-encrypted collaboration platform anyone could host on their own server” which will be “designed to serve as a platform for coordinating activists, journalists, and troublemakers of all stripes.